Building a tornado in a bottle

Recreate the look of a tornado by building this water vortex art piece. The components that go into it are all very simple and can be found in your recycling bin with the exception of a motor and a way to drive it. The hard part is going to be getting to the point where you don’t have any leaks.

[Ixisuprflyixi] went with an empty salsa bottle to house the vortex. It’s a pleasant shape for the project since it’s both tall and narrow and it’s got a bit of a sexy curve to it. The base of the machine is a plastic bottle which looks like it might have been for Metamucil, but we’re not sure. The important part is that it needs to be made from HDPE, as a portion of the container will be used to make the impeller. That’s the part that attaches to the motor shaft inside of the container. Give it a spin and you’ve got yourself a tornado in a bottle. See it in action after the jump.

Yep, I had a similar one, and it too had a mag drive. With a surprisingly weak magnet and motor. I guess it doesn’t take much force to eventually get the water moving, when there’s nothing there to slow it down.

Very pretty, makes me want one. although I would have to find a way to make it silent and prevent the light from bleeding though the base. Maybe placing a container within a container then having a layer of insolation would work. Cool stuff, I will have to give the build a look at.

It doesn’t use a spinning magnet but a metal rod connected directly to the motor in the base, bent into a circle with a small spring wrapped around it, almost identical to the battery powered whisk linked below.